The First Man is the posthumously published, last and unfinished novel by Albert Camus. At this stage I should say that I have never read any other Camus, or know a great deal about him, apart from what i have picked up via wikipaedia.

The novel tells the story of Jacques Cormery a native of Algiers, through recalled memories of an impoverished childhood. Despite being from a very poor family, his father having died during the war, leaving him and his mother to struggle under a matriarchal grandmother, he succeeds academically; earning a scholarship to continue his education.

The bulk of the novel is set against the backdrop of Algeria, pre independence from France. The tension between the native Arabs and the immigrant French population is always bubbling away.

Although a very good and interesting read, the writing flows and at times is quite brilliant, the fact that the novel is unfinished is always staring at you from the pages. At the end of the novel itself an appendix contains notes and additional material. At various points throughout, there are footnotes alluding to story additions.

For this reason I found the novel hard to get into and it did feel unfinished at times. On the other hand, it was a fascinating insight into a writer at work, and worth looking at for the writing process alone.

It was a shame that Camus died before finishing what appears to have been a monumental work. Here we only have the childhood memories, of a forty year old man, almost thirty years of memories are left untouched. And for a writer who fought against nihilism, there is little, in what we have here, to counter that standpoint.

The First Man is good, but it could, or should, have been much more.